Lightslei:So I guess I'll nail this on the head. I never saw anything of Star Wars, much less do I want anything to do with the series. When things get hyped up so much by the fans, I despise it. There's a lot of things that fall into this category, most recently Scott Pilgrim. Although I did see LOTR when it came out, and think they're good movies, but not "must-see".

Hell the movies in my "must-see" list would have people going "What?"1. Neverending Story2. Pagemaster

That's the entirety of my list.

THE PAGEMASTER IS F***ING AWESOME!! <3

I can sometimes be that guy thats not in the loop, but normally, if I find what my friends are talking about interesting, I look it up and watch/play/listen to it.

(Also I can be the other guy to sometimes as well. (Especially if I hear people calling themselves gamers, and then say they only play MW2, and that its the best game ever(RAGE!RAGE!RAGE!RAGE!RAGE!RAGE!RAGE!RAGE!RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEE!!!!)))

Hmm for some reason I am disliking Star Wars being compared to Star Trek and Stargate. Not saying Star Wars is better than Trek, it just doesn't seem like Star Wars is sci-fi. It doesn't really look into the unknown or explore the moral or ethical ramifications of man playing God or talk about the dangers and pros of a new Technology. It had people running around in space ships blowing things up and being awesome. So yeah Star Wars, not sci-fi in my book, Star Trek was and I can't comment on Stargate, but yeah please don't flame me too much, there is more that I want to say but I am sick and can't focus so. :(

kotorfan04:Hmm for some reason I am disliking Star Wars being compared to Star Trek and Stargate. Not saying Star Wars is better than Trek, it just doesn't seem like Star Wars is sci-fi. It doesn't really look into the unknown or explore the moral or ethical ramifications of man playing God or talk about the dangers and pros of a new Technology. It had people running around in space ships blowing things up and being awesome. So yeah Star Wars, not sci-fi in my book, Star Trek was and I can't comment on Stargate, but yeah please don't flame me too much, there is more that I want to say but I am sick and can't focus so. :(

Sci fi doesn't really have to do anything of those things. In fact I'd rather they didn't if they're blatantly hitting the usual sci-fi-points-of-interest like Stargate did.

First of all I didn't like Stargate, could never get into it, but I LOVED Star Wars, it basically was at least half my childhood, so please understand I am not insulting Star Wars at all, just being an annoying quibler and disputing it being categorized as Sci-Fi. It had Sci-Fi trappings like lasers and spaceships and all but to me it still feels like a reskinned (and awesome) fantasy story. We have our wizards, the soulless empire, the great evil, and of course the farmboy going on a quest of self-discovery and becoming the great hero. The heart of Star Wars to me at least is a fantasy story with some sci-fi trappings thrown on. Yes it adds a nice bit of spice that seperates it from the standard fantasy fare, but I find that it has way more in common with Lord of the Rings than Metropolis or Blade Runner or Inception.

Second of all my thoughts on Dune were it was a bit hard to get into but rewarding as hell if you manage to slug through the book. Movie struck me as weird campy and hilarious.

kotorfan04:First of all I didn't like Stargate, could never get into it, but I LOVED Star Wars, it basically was at least half my childhood, so please understand I am not insulting Star Wars at all, just being an annoying quibler and disputing it being categorized as Sci-Fi. It had Sci-Fi trappings like lasers and spaceships and all but to me it still feels like a reskinned (and awesome) fantasy story. We have our wizards, the soulless empire, the great evil, and of course the farmboy going on a quest of self-discovery and becoming the great hero. The heart of Star Wars to me at least is a fantasy story with some sci-fi trappings thrown on. Yes it adds a nice bit of spice that seperates it from the standard fantasy fare, but I find that it has way more in common with Lord of the Rings than Metropolis or Blade Runner or Inception.

Second of all my thoughts on Dune were it was a bit hard to get into but rewarding as hell if you manage to slug through the book. Movie struck me as weird campy and hilarious.

Finally I loved the comic and almost laughed myself to death.

Oh yeah I agree with you there. Star Wars is basically a WW2 movie in space.

I was disagreeing with this part.

It doesn't really look into the unknown or explore the moral or ethical ramifications of man playing God or talk about the dangers and pros of a new Technology.

While some (excellent) sci fi is all about the introspection there's a lot of excellent work that's just telling a story for it's own sake. Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson stands out as one.

While some (excellent) sci fi is all about the introspection there's a lot of excellent work that's just telling a story for it's own sake. Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson stands out as one.

Alright, I will admit that I have never read Snow Crash or even really heard of Neil Stephenson before today. (My nerd cred just took a huge hit.) And I suppose I will do some nifty backtracking by saying that my list was composed on the fly so I guess it isn't completely inclusive and it was also my fault for not coming up with a standard definition of what makes something or another sci-fi before the debate started. So apologies for the confusion, my only issue was with Star Wars being lumped in with all the other sci-finess, so I am bad at wrapping things up so I think I am just going to pass out on my bed for a few hours.

I guess now I need to start a webcomic up and draw some characters with tattoos on them, and then randomly remove them in the archives, and put them back every so often, just to see if I can get responses like this one.

heh yea, that was totally my intention all along. You got me.. Its completely and totally a ruse...

except not. surprisingly, erin doesnt show off her left wrist all that often and it makes me forget to include it. to this date it appears ive forgotten the tattoo in 15, 26, 27 and 30. I wanted to make her like spider jerusalem, tattoos covering her body and all, but unfortunately i cant have her running around with her shirt off all the time like he does so it couldnt be the same. its one of those things im working on.

Loonerinoes:If you want to talk about Star Wars or any such 'must see' work of fiction, sure...you'd better have seen it first. But if someone just genuinely doesn't want to talk about it or hasn't even seen it, then why the heck are you so upset about it that you have to go ad hominem on their ass? Okay...doing it in a jokey sort of way is fine, but genuine resentment? Heh...alright, then you need some help.

I mean...I understand it if people start going around saying "Warhammer ripped WoW off" or such, those people really do need to have their ignorance pointed out to them. But even there I couldn't give a shit about which came first to be honest. It's like the whole "Every modern high fantasy fiction is always 100% plagiatist of Tolkien!" thing - stop moaning about it, because the similarities are so retartedly pointless by now that it's not even worth mentioning as anyone, who's done their research, can tell the difference between "inspired" and "plagiarism." Or are we going to go down the road of Tolkien being a plagiatist of the old norse mythologies?...who were plagiazing the elements of nature?...who were plagiazing the whole goddamn universe? :p

Honestly I sometimes find the elitists, who even bash the uninformed that don't want to talk about their popular idols of worship, as moreso obnoxious than the ignoramuses. So yes...I know who these people are in this comic really. Two of them in fact. Those who want to slag off things based on uninformed opinions, that come from not having examined the 'must-have' works as well as those who just slag off any who hasn't seen them, even when they'd just genuinely had other stuff in their lives than freaking Star Wars.

It's popular, sure, but come the hell on! When elitists automatically think that advertising push and lightsabers and shit have to equal every human being on the planet knowing about it, they're only fooling themselves really. It's symptomatic of the whole myopic Western culture I think, that likes to imagine how it dominates the world now and that everyone must bow down to it. Sure, it's best known...but dominate the world? Heh...not by a longshot I think.

What you have to remember is that Clutch is a video games journalist. Video games are tied into nerd culture. Western nerd culture is tied into Star Wars. That's not a myopic view. It's a legitimate assessment. Clutch not having seen Star Wars (and then lying about it) isn't acceptable in his particular social circle and it's certainly a weakness when it comes to his profession.

Erin not liking people who haven't seen Dune on the other hand is a little bit extreme. She's not supposed to be always right.

One of the reasons I like working with Cory is that he's the polar opposite of me when it comes to these things. He hasn't seen the majority of the films I consider sacred and is completely nonplussed when I force him to watch them.

Yeah, I guess that'd make sense. TBH I was moreso just venting a bit with my post on an issue that this reminded me of so...took it a tad too seriously I guess - not really that I disliked the comic, it was good (but if you do look for feedback on this - have Erin do her punchline and no need to add the narrator box on top of it. Her words suffice well enough I think :) ) But of course - in the end it always comes down to the context in which the thing takes place, which within this comic is alright. It's just that contexts is something I've always found geekdom and fandom to be a thing that they in general just can't handle properly many times. As...perhaps demonstrated by your comic nicely. Maybe wasn't quite what you set out to communicate with it, but still - it's a good comic! :)

In the original release of the film, Greedo did not shoot at Han at all. In the 1997 re-release of the film, Greedo gets a badly-aimed shot at Solo before Solo kills him. George Lucas has said that this change is to enhance Solo's overall heroism. This was a controversial decision and in the 2004 version the two shots are almost simultaneous, with Greedo shooting first. - Wikipedia

Isaac Asimov died in 1992 and wrote loads of fantastic stuff and the seminal foundation series while he was alive.

OT: The dune film is not a must see; if you've read the books it is, in fact, a bit lame.

I was actually referring to the Foundation series there, which, as you pointed out, was indeed written by Isaac Asimov. For the longest time, it was just a stand alone trilogy, but then in the 90's he started writing novels again. Problem being, not only was the feel of the series completely different, but in his old age the man tried to tie all of his different universes together through the Foundation trilogy, so we wound up with a mish-mash of the Foundation universe and the Robot cycle, which just didn't work.

As for Dune, I never even bothered with Brian Herbert's take on it, although I have to say I was tempted when I heard about the sequel; Frank really wasn't done with the series when he died, and his last book ended on a major cliff hanger. What he finished was basically one full trilogy, two thirds of the next trilogy, and a bridge novel to tie them together. Even though I didn't like the last three books as much as the first three, and even though the consensus is that Brian Herbert's version sucked, I'm still tempted to get the books he wrote that tie up those loose ends.

ARRGH! I get this all the time from a friend of mine. I've seen all the StarWars, Dune, even read the first Dune. My problem is when this friend of mine keeps bugging me about old movies I NEED to see. Or how he'll look down on me because I haven't. Grr!

Isaac Asimov died in 1992 and wrote loads of fantastic stuff and the seminal foundation series while he was alive.

OT: The dune film is not a must see; if you've read the books it is, in fact, a bit lame.

I was actually referring to the Foundation series there, which, as you pointed out, was indeed written by Isaac Asimov. For the longest time, it was just a stand alone trilogy, but then in the 90's he started writing novels again. Problem being, not only was the feel of the series completely different, but in his old age the man tried to tie all of his different universes together through the Foundation trilogy, so we wound up with a mish-mash of the Foundation universe and the Robot cycle, which just didn't work.

As for Dune, I never even bothered with Brian Herbert's take on it, although I have to say I was tempted when I heard about the sequel; Frank really wasn't done with the series when he died, and his last book ended on a major cliff hanger. What he finished was basically one full trilogy, two thirds of the next trilogy, and a bridge novel to tie them together. Even though I didn't like the last three books as much as the first three, and even though the consensus is that Brian Herbert's version sucked, I'm still tempted to get the books he wrote that tie up those loose ends.

The foundation books of the nineties were not by Asimov, being dead put a damper on his publishing new works, they were by Greg Bear, Greg Brinford and Roger McBride Allen. Between them they filled spots Asimov had left open on his time-line with notes that a book may fit there. For some reason the publisher put Asimov's name in Huge letters ('Asimovs foundation')and authors in teeny tiny script when they printed the covers.

Asimov wrote the seconds foundation series in the eighties only forward the foundation was in the nineties - it was published posthumously.

Far from folding in ALL his various themes (which would be a herculean literary effort)he only rolled in those that he felt made sense and while different in feel from his 50's through to late sixties work it's style was consistent with the science fiction of the time and his writing style as it had developed. Many consider them to be some of his finest work and garnered him most of his literary awards. the only weak spot was a slight inconstancy in the time-line.

Yes the later books weren't as good but what do you expect from a publisher milking a successful product with the legitimate excuse that Asimov had intended to fill some holes?

Brian Herbert's books are worth a read and as they mostly happen before the original series you can just consider them to be a slightly inferior knock-off. But if you really have to keep Dune pristine don't bother with them.

SciFi miniseries is to the Dune film what Peter Jackson's LOTR is to the Ralph Bakshi animations. Everyone should see the originals, but the later productions have been far superior.

The Lynch Dune is not quite in the same league as the Bakshi LOTR, mind, since the script for the Dune film took vast, sweeping liberties with even the most basic parts of the book.

kotorfan04:First of all I didn't like Stargate, could never get into it

SG1 is one of the greatest scifi series of all time. Atlantis was good, but not quite AS good. I barely want to even glance in the direction of SGU most of the time, as they've turned the series into a mediocre space soap opera, like New BSG.

If I wanted to know who was sleeping with whom and who is having X's baby, I'd go watch As the World Turns or some other mid-day crap.

Watched all six of the Star Wars movies. I understand that they have had quite the impact on modern day culture.On that note. I think my English teacher in the 9th grade had a Dune poster hanging in class, although I never watched those movies.I am currently reading the Dune Messiah though :]